Group: Kids' TV Filters Need Improvement

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, February 27, 2003

Making TV ratings and V-chips easier to figure out would help parents choose the shows their children watch, advocates of parental control say.

A new study of families given TV sets with V-chips to filter programing found that less than one-third used the technology during a year.

While many parents said they didn't need the V-chip to block designated programs with sex or violence, others didn't know their sets had the technology or found it too difficult to use.

"The parents of the United States know more right now in two weeks about how to duct tape the safe room in their house and how much water they should have than they know about this V-chip in their TV set," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

He said television programmers and set manufacturers should work to educate parents and make the technology simpler.

A spokeswoman for the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents TV makers, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Markey spoke at a forum on the tools available to parents to monitor their children's television viewing.

Much of the forum revolved around a study released by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Researchers gave TV sets with V-chips to 110 families with 7- to 10-year-old children. The researchers instructed about half of the families on television ratings and how to use the V-chip. The other families received less detailed information about TV set features including a menu of parental controls.

After monitoring V-chip use for a year beginning in November 1999, the researchers found that 36 percent of families with more training tried the technology compared to 23 percent of the other families.

"Parents who have some training and have some more information about what the ratings mean are more likely to try to use it and use it successfully," said Amy Jordan, the senior researcher.

Jordan said one obstacle to V-chip use is that on some TV sets parents must navigate a complex series of menus to program the feature. Ten families in the study who tried the V-chip could not get it to work properly.

A television ratings system and the V-chip emerged after increasing criticism of TV fare in the 1990s. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 required all new TV sets to contain a V-chip, which became standard equipment in January 2000.

Rating designations include TV-Y7 for children 7 and older, TV-14 for children 14 and older, FV for fantasy violence, V for violence and D for suggestive dialogue.

A 2001 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 40 percent of American families own a television set with a V-chip, but only 17 percent of those families use the device.